


wounded by dust; a lauren character study

by willowcabins



Category: Lost Girl
Genre: Anarchy, Army, Character Study, Doctor/Patient, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-22
Updated: 2013-04-22
Packaged: 2017-12-09 04:20:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/769907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowcabins/pseuds/willowcabins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karen Beattie was tired; tired of lying, tired of failing. Karen Beattie wanted to hide. She closed the door slowly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wounded by dust; a lauren character study

**title** : Wounded By Dust  
 **author** : [](http://willowcabins.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://willowcabins.livejournal.com/)**willowcabins**  
 **rating** : pg-13  
 **summary** : _Karen Beattie was tired; tired of lying, tired of failing. Karen Beattie wanted to hide. She closed the door slowly._

 

“Can you ever remember a time when you weren’t alone?” the question echoed around the room. Lauren smiled weakly.

Once, she’d had Bo; before that it had been Nadia; before that Nina. All these people who she loved, and all these people who she destroyed. Lauren tried to blink back the tears; she tried to forget Karen’s pain. They used to be interchangeable: Lauren and Karen used to be the same person. She wasn’t so sure Karen deserved Lauren anymore.  
  
  
  


_Knowledge emboldened her._

She clung to the confidence it gave her; she espoused words of wisdom when she wanted control.

"Stop it, Karen. Hugh and I have no idea what you're talking about." Her mother snapped when she came home over winter break. "I mean, come on: Arabic? What are you even going to do with that?"

"Join the army?" Hugh chuckled.

"I would like that." Karen’s words were icy. Hugh blinked. Her mother scoffed.

"Wouldn't that require you to fight in the army, darling? Can you really see yourself surviving any sort of training? I say leave the saving of our glorious land to the men. You just concentrate on being a doctor."

"Only about 65 percent of Army doctors are reserve officers." No one took Karen’s idea seriously.

  
  
Freedom required responsibility. And responsibility bread guilt as young Afghan women don't survive simple births because Lauren forgot the fundamentals of stopping blood flow after a still birth, probably induced by herbal abortion.

She sat under her desk in that hot tent and wished for someone to save her.

Her mother had told her once that wishing was for quitters.

Perhaps that was when Lauren had started quitting.

  
  
Knowing things made hating things so much easier; the more Karen listened, the more she read, the more she hated the world around her. People were cruel and malicious, abusing each other for their own ends and plotting only for their own ascension. “We will destroy them _all_ ,” Nina promised, her anger emboldening her. Karen nodded vigorously.

“We will,” she promised, clutching Nina’s hand.

“They’re evil,” Nina repeated. Karen nodded emphatically. A mantra that a thirteen year old began chanting bloomed into a fact as sixteen year old clung to and a manifesto that two delinquents at twenty-five repeated to each other. “They’re evil, and this government deserves to be torn down,” two voices sang and charmed, until more boys with leather jackets and girls with ripped jeans joined their cry.

  
  
“How is this different than what we had before?” The Ash asked, sitting on his solitary chair in the big white medical facility. His cream coloured suit seemed off in the stark white medical facilities, but Lauren tried really hard not to notice as she took a deep breath.

“Warfarin and heparin work in slightly different ways, but both block the production of certain proteins in your liver called “cofactors.” Vitamin K controls the creation of these cofactors in your liver, and warfarin reduces clotting in your blood by preventing vitamin K from working correctly. Heparin also works by preventing certain cofactors, namely thrombin and fibrin, from working correctly. By blocking the process early on, both warfarin and heparin ultimately help to reduce blood clots from forming in the sample.” The Ash stared at her steadily even after she talked. His great silences still made Lauren nervous, even if she knew they weren’t intended to intimidate. The Ash rose slowly.

“Good work,” he murmured, his deep resounding voice soothing Lauren’s nervousness. She smiled as he walked out and turned to the harpy next to her.

“I told you this would run smoothly,” she told her, grinning. The harpy didn’t blink. “It’s a joke.” Lauren clarified. The Harpy didn’t respond. “Because we were discussing anticoagulants? They stop the blood from cl—“

“I know what anticoagulants are.” The harpy’s interruption shocked Lauren so much she almost bit her tongue.

“Sorry,” she murmured, bowing her head.

  
  
 _Knowledge shaped her._

  
  
  
  
  
He liked calling her Kary. "That’s not my name." she hissed at him, shoving him over as he stood on two unstable legs. He’d wobbled and fallen into the grass, stunned silence giving way to loud shrieking tears.

"Kary!" he wailed.

"Don’t call me that!" she shrieked, tearing away from him, down the street.

"Karen come back here! Right this instance!" But his words no longer had any weight to her. Karen ran until her chest hurt and she couldn't stop sobbing.

  
  
"Don’t touch me."

"You’re hurt."

"I said don't touch me."

"I wish you'd let someone else take care of you for once, Lauren. This isn't good for you."

"I can take care of myself, Nadia. I don't need anyone."

“Lauren! Stop being so headstrong! Here, let me bandage it at least.”

“I’m fine.” Nadia still took the white gauze from Lauren’s shaking hand and began winding it around her arm gently.

“I don’t care what you say; you’re not fine,” she smiled sadly. Lauren looked away as tears began to fall down her cheeks.

  
  
The necklace had been an honour at first. Lauren had been tired and worried and sick about Nadia. The serious man with the dark voice had smiled at her and praised her, and although she didn't know him, she felt the respect emanating from the crowd of people around her.

She had cried when the man in the white suit had laid it around her neck. It gave her power, he'd told her.

She took it off every evening now. Ever since Bo had thrown it at her. Thrown it at her as she stood in the middle of the room, hating herself and wishing that Bo would see that this wasn't her. Lauren just did what he wanted now.

And thank god it was the Ash's fault. Otherwise how would she explain to the light glow of Nadia’s pod?

  
  
"I had a cat, once." Bo looked up, surprised. Lauren gestured at the drawing of some cat like demon that dominated the left side of the page. They were trying to identify a bite, going through Trick’s archive of books while Dyson called on his shape-shifter brethren.

"I never pegged you for a cat person." Bo admitted with a smirk. Lauren chuckled.

“I’m a lesbian, Bo. Cat husbandry is in my blood,” Lauren deadpanned, eliciting a chuckle from Bo. “No, sadly the cat did not peg me as a cat person either: He ran way after four days and never came back." Bo covered her mouth in surprise, though she couldn't help but smile at Lauren's sarcastic grin. "I found out years later that he'd moved in with my neighbours," she admitted with a shrug.

  
  
"Everything in here is replaceable." The new Ash looked at her, concerned.

"But it’s your equipment," he said, surprised. Lauren narrowed her eyes at him.

"It’s yours." she explained to him. Hale grinned.

"I forgot." He admitted. He bounced on the balls of his feet. “I like being Ash,” he admitted with a grin.

“Honorary Ash,” Lauren almost reminded him. But the edge to his excitement worried her, and she decided silence would be wiser. She remembered what power could do to people.

  
  
“We have to attack now.” Nina seemed to have a glow in her eyes and feverish energy as she paced Karen’s apartment, a group of twenty disciples staring up at her in amazement. “We need to attack before they realize. Karen, can you teach Doreen, Leonard and Son how to make pipe bombs?” Karen opened her mouth but Nina didn’t wait to hear a confirmation. She espoused her plan; bombing the UN would show them all, she claimed; it would show them that the government deserved none of the interference it claimed with people’s lives and it would show them the ultimate fault in their capitalist utilitarianism that devalues the worth of every human soul. Karen bit her lip and listened as Nina lost her way in the maze of her own thoughts, forgetting who she was condemning and expressing her rage in the destructive rhetoric that had collected the group of rebels in the first place. Later that night when Nina  was jittery and shivery and Karen tried to revise for the anatomy exam she had in the morning, Karen tried to express her doubts.

“Nina, are you sure this is a good idea?” Nina spun around and stared at Karen.

“Am I sure this is a good idea?!” She repeated in disbelief. “Karen, they deserve to _pay_ for what they are doing to us. Have you seen the pictures; they claim our army is instigating peace in Afghanistan but look at the pain, look at the suffering! They’re _killing_ people, raping them and murdering children because they’re _evil_ , Karen. They are destructive and evil and want to turn us all into parts of their collective machine that will do nothing but earn them money. They look at us as commodities and they just want to rob us of everything we value you in our lives. _Do you doubt their maliciousness_?” Nina’s eyes were on fire and her heart beat was racing and she was scaring Karen.

“Do you doubt me?” Nina whispered, as if she saw Karen’s flickering indecision. Karen’s resolve hardened.

“Never,” she promised, cupping Nina’s cheek. “I don’t, I promise.”

  
  
 _Knowledge weighed down on her._

  
  
  
  
  
It was funny. Bo was lying on her couch, stretched out and watching Lauren as Lauren examined blood samples through her microscope. "Can you fix me?" Bo asked quietly. She was looking morose and worried; Lauren wished that she could do more for her than just curb her hunger. Lauren smiled weakly.

"You’re not broken." She corrected her. Bo smirked. Lauren shook her head. "I stand by my word when we first met: you're a perfect specimen of your kind." Bo grinned at that and Lauren was relieved to see that smile.

"Why Doctor Lewis," Bo smirked, "would you like to repeat any other experiences from our first encounter?" Lauren chuckled and left her desk, her microscopes, and her blood samples and sat down next to Bo. Bo sat up on her elbow and grinned sheepishly. Lauren leaned forward and slowly kissed her, cherishing the warmth of Bo’s lips. ‘If only everything was this simple,’ she thought as Bo cupped her cheek tenderly. She pushed away the doubts and deepened the kiss.  
  
  


“Doctor Lewis?! _Doctor Lewis_! Lauren! _Lauren!_!” Lauren looked up in surprise. The name still took her by surprise. The woman standing at the door of the tent was crossing her arms in annoyance. “Are you deaf?” She demanded, glaring.

“I was concentrating,” Lauren replied icily.

“Well, stop concentrating.” The woman snapped. “The epileptic boy is having a seizure again. They think he’s being possessed by the devil.” Lauren cursed and grabbed her little black bag before leaving the tent. She and the photographer who seemed to be everywhere _all the time_ with her annoying smile and dark eyes set off towards the village at a light jog.

“Can you heal him?” The woman asked as they arrived, her regional Arabic forcing Lauren to pause longer as she tried to decipher the meaning. She looked down as she realized what the woman was asking.

“She’ll try her best,” Nadia intervened with a comforting smile before she pushed Lauren at the boy.  
  
  
  


Dr. Everett left on a Tuesday night. Lauren wanted to beg the kindly addonexus to stay with her. There was so much she still didn't know. And those gaps in her knowledge laughed at her as she read tomes so dusty they seemed to crumble in her hands by the light of Nadia’s pod.

"You can do this; I trust you." she had placed one hand on each of Lauren’s shoulders and smiled encouragingly. "Don’t let him treat you badly. You're his charge, not his slave." Lauren had chuckled, looking down as her hair fell forward.

"Does he know the difference?"  
  
  
  


"This is your room." Her mother clapped her hands in excitement.

"Guess who has her very own room?" her father crooned. One room was small and blue and the other one was larger and had wooden panelling. One was right opposite the kitchen and had a small window in the corner where the evening sun lit up the dust. The other had a view of a meadow, a river, and a windowsill which had a small draft from the old glass.

"I don't want it," two different Laurens replied at two different times. She crossed her arms.

"But it’s yours," two different sets of eyes tried to instill on her. One set of eyes was brown like her’s; the other was blue.

"I already have a room," two Laurens protested. She looked up. Blonde hair that was finer than her own glittered in the reflection from the old glass. A firm friendly hand held her shoulder in the blue room.

"Things are changing, baby." A man's and a woman's voice said the exact same words at two different times on the same day. They made a queer symphony.

She was eight.

Neither room was hers.  
  
  
  


She was standing in Bo’s room, in that stupid draughty house, trying to suppress those tears that spilled down her cheeks. She bent down and picked up the necklace, but she dropped it again, the thin silver chain slipping through her hands. She let it sit in a pool of silver at her feet.

“ _I haven’t done anything wrong_.” Oh she had: she knew that. It was so much easier _not_ to know sometimes. She blinked and looked up at the ceiling.  
  
  
  


She had a brother. He was small and he had her blond hair, though he had different eyes. They were green, like his mother's.

"I hear you have a brother now," _her_ mother had sniffed.

"I don't want him." Lauren ignored him. Her mother laughed spitefully.

“I don’t think anyone does.”  
  
  


The soldier she had loved had called her 'mine' for a month. She’d used it in a romantic way, whispering 'my love' to her as she lay in her arms. She was sweet and taught Karen how to make pipe bombs and never asked once why Lauren was so interested in the United Nations headquarters. In retrospect, Lauren called it denial and cried when she remembered how the woman had died. “She was doing her job,” Nina hissed as they sat in the car in front of the hospital. “Anyway she’s only in intensive care.”

“I want to go and see her,” Karen hissed, angry tears streaming down her face. Everything had gone wrong; the wrong woman had been hurt and now Karen and Nina’s face were on the national news and the pretty guard with the eyes that shone so bright was dying and all because Nina had feelings.

“You can’t.” Nina snapped, holding Karen back. “We’re fugitives now.” Karen looked down to where Nina’s long slender fingers captured her arm and she almost snarled. She wanted gone. She looked at Nina.

“I am _done_ ,” she snapped, ripping her arm away and opening the door aggressively. Nina scoffed.

“Where will you go?” She asked, smirking as Karen stepped out the small car, securing her hat and sunglasses.

“Away. Far away.” Karen replied and left her friend in the parking lot. She felt small and lost, but she gritted her teeth and struggled onwards.  
  
  
  


Bo started picking up her phone with the words "Doctor Lewis's lover." Lauren felt a strange thrill of pleasure, of ownership, every time she did that. Bo was her's, and no one, no one, should ever forget that.  
  
  
  


“Do you ever miss working with humans?” Bo’s words were flirtatious and innocent. Lauren smiled at her and told her a lie about how pedestrian her own kind was. The truth was that there was a _limit_ to knowledge about humans and long ago Lauren had found out that _limits_ were a problem.  
  
  
  


And yet. The limits this life offered her were an anchor; a protection against the tearing winds of the world that had so often threatened to tear Lauren apart. She stood in the semi-darkness of her apartment and remembered; she remembered when the wooden stars hung from the ceiling and when Nadia was lost on the floor in a puddle of blood. She also remembered that one night when Bo came because she was lonely and lay on the couch and watched Lauren work. Or that other night when she had a nightmare and Bo came over and made all the bad thoughts flee with her excellent mouth and even better fingers. Or that one night when she’d tried to cook for Bo but they got distracted and the rice became a sticky burnt mess but Lauren was in an excellent mood for the next week. She remembered that one time Bo told her that she, _Lauren,_ the human doctor, made that beautiful, _perfect_ succubus breathless and she remembered the twisting leap her heart had done. She remembered every time that Bo had come and she wanted to cry.

She stood at her door and tried not to cry. In the end though, this life wasn’t hers. This life was the life of Doctor Lauren Lewis, the woman who was accomplished and confident. She was a fiction. Karen Beattie was tired; tired of lying, tired of failing. Karen Beattie wanted to hide. She closed the door slowly.

Karen Beattie was going to disappear again.


End file.
